


a sea of fears and dreams

by Ergelia



Series: your dream is my reality [1]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Healing, M/M, Magical Realism, Sickness, magical illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 05:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19419313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ergelia/pseuds/Ergelia
Summary: Yeosang is born with dark blue roses blooming across his skin.But it's okay. It doesn't hurt him, not much.





	a sea of fears and dreams

**Author's Note:**

> scroll to the notes below for warnings!

Yeosang is born with dark blue roses blooming across his skin.

It’s not a death sentence, not like it would’ve been if he was born a hundred years ago. There are surgeries and medicine used to treat his condition. So what if he has to empty his lungs out every few months? It doesn’t mean he’ll die, strangled by flowers in his sleep.

What it does mean is that Yeosang can’t ever feel like everyone else does. Nothing bothers him. Nothing makes him cry. Once, his best friend leaves him all alone in an alleyway and tells him to wait until he comes back. He doesn’t come back, though, not even when Yeosang waits until his mother comes to find him with tears in her eyes. When he explains to her what happened, she bursts into tears and hugs him tight. Tells him to never play with the boy again. She asks him if he’s okay, if he needs anything.

Yeosang says nothing, because he doesn’t understand.

When he’s old enough his parents take him to the doctor. She’s old and wrinkled, but her smile is brilliant and her hands are gentle as she guides him to the chair. The nurses scan his chest and whisper words he doesn’t understand. “Snowdrop medicine,” one says to the other. The other shakes her head and points at a corner of the picture of Yeosang’s chest. “Snowdrop doesn’t remove them completely enough. We need Galliflower.”

In the end, they do the same thing they always do. The doctor sits him down and gently tells him they’ll be taking something from his chest. “It won’t hurt a bit,” she assures him.

Yeosang thinks he’d be okay if it hurt.

He leaves the doctor’s office with a small plastic bag filled with leaves and petals. There’s a dark gold lollipop in his mouth and a spray bottle labeled 'Galliflower' in his hand. His mom carries a jar filled with tiny white pills for him.

Back home, Yeosang keeps the leaves and petals in his top drawer. (He doesn't know it yet, but it becomes a kind of ritual for him, every time he visits the doctor to get them removed. It reminds him, if he keeps them close.)

In the mirror, he sees that the blue roses that stretch across his chest are nestled in the crooked line below his collarbone. A few leaves wrap around his neck but they’re fine. Harmless. The doctor told him to be careful of the vines but he doesn't _think_ they do anything.

Later, he learns in biology class about spontaneous manifestation. To be exact, the congenital magical disorder they’ve named as the _Angel’s Mark_. It’s an ironic name. Yeosang thinks it’s kind of stupid, that some Christian priest saw a child with feathers growing from her collarbones and named the phenomenon the Angel’s Mark. There’s nothing angelic about something that lives under your skin without an invitation.

The Angel’s Mark isn’t always bad. When it manifests in tear ducts or under the tongue, the most you have to deal with is some soreness and random objects dropping from your face. If it manifests on a non-essential body part, like your pinky nail, some have the body part removed entirely. It’s grotesque but effective.

The doctors say that cutting out his vocal chords might turn Yeosang mute.

His parents never bring it up again.

Instead, Yeosang learns how to speak gently. Quietly. He never raises his voice more than needed. He dutifully takes his daily dosage of antithaumates, and always carries his Galliflower spray with him. Sometimes he has to run to the bathroom to cough out stained violet-blue petals, and sometimes he finds leaves in his food, but it’s okay. He’s okay.

But teenager Yeosang hates being okay. He hates being stuck in a perpetual state of neutral bliss. His parents barely allow him to take walks on his own. They hate it when he talks for too long. They’re overprotective, and while Yeosang understands why they’re so fucking overprotective, he hates it.

So when the time comes to sign up for clubs in his fancy, prestigious high school, Yeosang signs up for the musical club. And the dance club. And the skateboarding club. He covers up the roses that dance around his throat with thick chokers and scarves and ugly leather necklaces, and nobody is the wiser. His classmates just think he’s one of the emo, band boys like Changbin, who listens to dark music and watches horror shows for fun. Yeosang doesn’t like those things, but it’s not like people really care, so he never denies it.

He tells his parents he joined the drone piloting club and even buys a drone to make it more believable. A drone piloting club doesn't even exist at his school. Still, Yeosang likes his new drone, and his parents don’t bring it up again, so he thinks he managed to convince them.

Yeosang’s surprisingly good at singing, and he loves his new skateboard that one of the rich seniors in his club got for him. He doesn’t like dancing nearly as much, but he meets Wooyoung who manages to make him laugh for the first time in years.

Life is better than okay.

Wooyoung is nice but also kind of mean, and he likes dragging Yeosang into pranks and mischief that Yeosang would have never gotten into on his own.

“It’ll be fun,” Wooyoung tells him as he sneaks into the cafeteria. Moments later, he runs back out with a suspicious grin on his face, and laughs as he tugs Yeosang along in his escape.

Yeosang sighs in resignation as he follows, the distant panicked screams of the cafeteria crowd echoing behind them.

Wooyoung is a tiring person to be friends with, but he’s a good one. Yeosang doesn’t think he’d trade him for anybody else. It takes them time, but Yeosang learns that Wooyoung won’t say anything about what he does, won’t treat him like he’s made of glass, even when Yeosang carefully explains why there’s always a blue rose or two stuffed in his pockets. He does demand to know what to do if Yeosang ever begins randomly spitting out flowers, but he also goes and gets Yeosang a brand new silk collar to cover up the marks on his neck.

“I think they’re very beautiful, like every other part of you, but if you’re uncomfortable I won’t tell you to keep them out in public,” Wooyoung says, “but if you think that I’m letting you use those unfashionable neckerchiefs to cover it up you need to think again.”

“They aren’t neckerchiefs,” Yeosang grumbles, but he starts using Wooyoung’s gift all the same.

And life continues like it always does.

Then college hits them both like a vengeful freight truck.

Suddenly, Yeosang’s meeting new people and dealing with new problems on a daily basis. Life throws curveball after curveball, and Yeosang doesn’t even have a bat to ward them off. He just ducks and cowers in the corner of the field like he does with most stuff.

He still takes his medicine religiously, and uses the Galliflower spray whenever he spits out petals mixed into toothpaste. Wooyoung has one on him too, even if he doesn’t say anything to Yeosang. Once they’re partying at a club (correction: Wooyoung is partying at a club, and Yeosang is trying very hard not to laugh at his best friend’s piteous attempts to seduce San, the bartender) and Yeosang chokes on an inopportune blue rosebud that chooses that moment to bloom in the back of his throat. It’s a very annoying rosebud, but after Wooyoung frantically washes Yeosang’s entire mouth out with Galliflower, and San panic-calls an ambulance, Yeosang hands the dried-off flower to San.

San stares at him in disbelief.

“It’s a pretty flower,” Yeosang says, deadpan. “I’m getting tired of Wooyoung sobbing about your shoulders and dimples at three AM in the morning, so think of it as a preemptive thank you for dating his cowardly ass.”

That makes San burst into hysterical giggles, and Yeosang leaves, satisfied. He doesn’t forget to send the ambulance off with his most sincere apologies and his parents’ business card tucked into the driver’s wallet.

Point is, college student Yeosang lives a normal life, despite the fact that his vocal chords choose the most inopportune moments to sprout roses and leaves. He’s got an okay life. Yeah, sometimes he has to sleep on the couch because goddamn, San is loud and Wooyoung sure has a lot of stamina for someone who complains about backaches every two seconds, but he’s got good friends. He’s in college studying things he likes.

He doesn’t remember any of the faces that he’s introduced to in freshman year, but that’s okay. Yeosang doesn’t need a lot of people in his life. He’s got Wooyoung and San and San’s roommate Yunho, and Yunho’s boyfriend Hongjoong and his best friend Mingi. There’s Jongho who he meets while skateboarding in the college communal park, and who Hongjoong basically takes under his wing as a music producer. Having even six people around him is quite enough for Yeosang, who’d had nobody for the first fifteen years of his life and then only Wooyoung for three.

But then Yeosang meets Park Seonghwa, and suddenly there’s a whole new range of emotions he’s never felt.

###

Park Seonghwa’s a year older than Yeosang. He’s Hongjoong’s roommate, and Yeosang is introduced to him when Hongjoong invites Yunho (and by extension the rest of their friends) to some party thrown by the arts department.

There’s nothing special about the moment that Yeosang sees him. It’s not like he suddenly falls in love, or has his breath taken away with the way Seonghwa’s long black coat clings to his well-defined shoulders and arms. It’s just that Yeosang starts talking to him, and he’s so _nice_. Not in the overbearing ‘oh hello sweetie’ type of nice, but in the genuine, charismatic sense.

“Nice tattoo,” Seonghwa remarks. Yeosang half expects him to be talking about the rose vines around his neck, and he glances downward to check if Wooyoung’s present is still there. But Seonghwa gestures towards the patchwork of gears and clock faces circling Yeosang’s left thumb instead.

“Ah,” Yeosang says, because he’s bad with people and even worse with hot people. “It’s. I got it with Wooyoung when we graduated from highschool. We decided on it on a whim, but I think the tattoo artist did a good job considering that me and Wooyoung just gave him a picture of a drone.”

And they had. Yeosang had told Wooyoung all about the fake drone club nonsense six months into their friendship, and Wooyoung, after laughing for five minutes straight, had made him promise to get a drone themed tattoo with him after graduating. The poor tattoo artist had to squint at the blurry photo of Yeosang's first drone (which had been lost in the trenches of their highschool running track) before she'd thrown it out and poured her soul into an intricate steampunk design. Yeosang winces at the memory of her crying over the final tattoo piece. "It was a mess," he admits.

Seonghwa grins when most everybody else who talks to Yeosang would’ve backed off by now.

“Sounds interesting, from what I heard about Wooyoung,” the taller man says. He hands Yeosang a chocolate brownie from his plate. “Heard you like chocolate. Want to get out of this mess and find a 24 hour café?”

Yeosang does, and they do.

They end up swapping numbers and promising to go to the cake and pastries exhibition that opens the next week– as friends, of course, because Yeosang might not have a single romantic bone in his body, but he still thinks he can tell the difference between a date and a friendly excursion.

(Tell that to Wooyoung and he’ll laugh at you for an hour. Then he’ll tell you that Yeosang once thought a highschool friend had baked a whole cheesecake for him just because he had helped her with her homework once. She’d had a crush on the pretty boy for months and Yeosang never realized it, ever.)

So. Seonghwa. A new addition in rose-boy Yeosang’s pretty normal, pretty okay life.

They start on going on friend-dates to desert cafes and karaoke rooms all over Seoul. Yeosang doesn’t care what his friends say, he knows that their relationship is strictly platonic. It’s easy, being close to Seonghwa. He doesn’t flinch every time Yeosang coughs and ends up strewing petals all over the place. He doesn’t stare or blanch in disgust when Yeosang confesses that he likes to collect the blossoms and leaves that grow inside of his throat. Seonghwa tells him that it’s morbid, but also that it’s poetic. Yeosang decides to keep his throat bare after that- it was getting uncomfortable anyways, and Yeosang has no idea how to properly wash silk. It has nothing to do with how Seonghwa traces the rose stems stretching across Yeosang’s neck with light, careful fingers. Nothing at all.

When Seonghwa comes over for the first time, Yeosang shows him the dried indigo roses he has in a jar.

“They’re very striking,” Seonghwa tells him. “Kind of look like your eyes, Sang-ah.”

“My eyes?” Yeosang frowns and tries to remember what color his eyes are. They aren’t any shade of blue, that’s for sure.

Seonghwa laughs lightly, dark hair falling into his eyes as he shakes his head.

“Not the color. You see the layered curves of the buds? Your eyes have the same swirls in them.”

Yeosang finds it odd that Seonghwa’s looked closely enough at his eyes to have noticed that, but then again Yeosang knows the exact curve of Seonghwa’s lips when he laughs so he supposes that they’re even on that front.

Then winter comes and Yeosang catches a cold. It’s not anything life-threatening, but colds make him miserable and mute so he pouts and wriggles around in his blanket fort. His friends drop by now and then with get well presents- but then Christmas comes and they’re too busy dating each other to visit him.

He’s resigned himself to a lonely Christmas night alone with his Netflix account. Then Seonghwa knocks on his door with a small smile and a big cake.

“Thought you might want something festive,” he says. “I’m guessing Wooyoung and San are too busy with each other to come here?”

Yeosang laughs, and lets him in.

It feels like Yeosang’s letting Seonghwa in in other ways too, but he can’t quite pinpoint where. He’ll figure it out some day. For now, Yeosang curls up next to Seonghwa on the sloping couch his mysterious roommate (whom Yeosang hasn’t seen since September) left in front of the kitchenette. The rickety old TV turns on to a Harry Potter marathon.

The younger boy falls asleep halfway through the Deathly Hallows. When he wakes up, he’s tucked in his bed with a tumbler filled with hot chocolate on his table. Yeosang smiles, and texts Seonghwa his thanks.

He pointedly doesn’t think about the handwritten note tucked under the bottle.

Six months later, Yeosang graduates college early, at the same time as Hongjoong and Seonghwa do. His parents are proud, of course they are. Their precious fragile son is all grown up now- he’s getting better. Yeosang didn’t really plan on graduating a year early, but life likes to throw things his way and he likes working hard. It gives him something other to do than mope about the meaning of life and his itchy throat in the mornings.

And there were no more classes for Yeosang to take, anyways. Not any that he liked.

He moves in with Seonghwa. It’s a natural thing to do; Hongjoong persuaded Yunho to join his tiny Gangnam studio apartment, because while Hongjoong doesn’t admit it, the older man is surprisingly loaded for a college graduate of his age. The rest of Yeosang’s friends are still stuck in college dorms. Naturally he needs a roommate to afford the frankly ludicrous rent price of downtown Seoul, and Seonghwa (who caught a fancy high-end job somehow) suggests that they cohabit a double bedroom flat. He lets Yeosang bring his growing collection of skateboards and drones and laughs when Yeosang confesses that he likes to fly his drones indoors.

Seonghwa’s gentle, and Yeosang has never felt more content.

Yeosang, who doesn’t know what to do with his engineering-slash-business degree, ends up working in a flower shop. The owner is an elderly lady- “Han Seolgi, that’s the name”- who shares Yeosang’s condition; she has crystals littering the skin underneath her eyes. Now that she’s old and doesn’t find a lot of reasons to cry, she tells him, it doesn’t bother her that much. But she does have a batch of Galliflower plants growing in the corner of her shop.

Chewing on the leaves and petals helps with the soreness.

One day, Yeosang dares to ask her why she never replaced her tear glands. She shrugs.

“Back in my day, we were all poor,” she says. “There was no reason to be sad about being able to cry gemstones if it could feed us.”

“What about now?” Yeosang wonders. “Why don’t you get them removed now?”

“A reminder,” she says. She doesn’t say anything after that.

###

November isn’t a very fun month for some, but for Yeosang and Seonghwa, huddled underneath the archway of the local park, it’s great.

“I think they’re gone,” Seonghwa murmurs. The two of them peek over the gates to see Mingi’s long legs disappear around the street corner. A heartbeat later, they hear a yelp as Jongho probably leaps onto the taller man. Yeosang muffles his giggles into his borrowed winter coat, leaning against Seonghwa’s side as they listen to Mingi’s panicked shouts and Jongho’s foot thudding against the snowy pavement.

“They’re cute when they are pining,” Yeosang says, “but I’m glad to see the end of it.”

“Yeah.”

There’s something different in the way Seonghwa says it. It’s not the normal, light voice Seonghwa takes when he’s happy. He still sounds happy, but. Different.

Yeosang looks up, and sees Seonghwa staring at him like he stares at his stars. The words on the tip of his tongue fall away, and he lets out a surprised squeak when Seonghwa pulls him to his chest, snow-dampened coat sending chills up Yeosang’s spine.

“I love you,” Seonghwa says. There’s a tremble in his voice and Yeosang can’t see his face, but he knows that Seonghwa’s doing that half-smile half grimace thing he does when he’s hesitant about something.

The taller man’s arms tighten around Yeosang’s shoulders. Suddenly, he finds it much harder to breathe.

“I love you,” Seonghwa whispers again. His cheek is pressed against Yeosang’s hair, and Yeosang can very clearly feel it when Seonghwa swallows hard. “I know you can’t love me back, Sangie, but would you still be my boyfriend?”

Yeosang, against his better judgment, says yes.

He doesn’t take his medicine that night. Seonghwa holds his hand as they sit on wet grass under Seonghwa’s favorite constellations, and they talk about nothing and everything at once. His heart flutters against his ribcage, like the butterflies San always like to describe. Yeosang grins against Seonghwa’s lips when the familiar curves soften against his mouth. The older boy takes him back to the flat they share, and they fall asleep listening to some of Hongjoong’s playlists on their dollar-shop radio.

The next morning Yeosang wakes up and retches into the sink.

Whole flowers in bloom get added to his collection. It’s the first time Yeosang’s ever seen blood on the petals, which are a vibrant shade of royal blue. Yeosang doesn’t tell Seonghwa; instead, he takes his medicine like he’s supposed to.

His heart is much calmer, after that.

Not much changes after they start dating. They hold hands, they kiss. They do cute boyfriend things, like Yunho and Hongjoong always do, but they also do the old couple arguments that Wooyoung and San often fall into. They have a comfortable relationship; they share friends, a home, and a life. With anyone else Yeosang might be worried, but he knows that even if they ever break up, Seonghwa would never leave him as a friend. So he relaxes, and lets Seonghwa pamper him with kisses and soft stuffed animals and mischievous dates.

At the end of every one of their dates, Seonghwa tells Yeosang he loves him.

Yeosang never says it back.

They take things slow. It’s not like they mean to- Yeosang is shy but not when he’s around people he know intimately and trust. Seonghwa’s been longing to touch him since the moment they met. It's just that Yeosang’s employer decides to leave for the countryside one day, and leaves the flower shop and everything to Yeosang. “A gift,” she says, and leaves the papers passing the ownership of the shop to Yeosang in his and Seonghwa’s mailbox. When Yeosang opens up the shop with his own keys the next day, he finds a small jewelry box filled with tiny but beautiful gemstones at the counter.

He calls her. She tells him to use the damn stones to “get your sweet boy something nice for his birthday.”

Yeosang thinks that he would’ve cried, if he could.

Instead he buys several books on flower arrangement and green magic, and some herbal plants from the apothecary down the street. He adds things here and there, makes a few charms to sell on the side. Magic may not be his specialty, but he knows enough about flower magic and herbal teas thanks to a childhood spent snipping roses that grew in his throat. For some reason, people love his shop. He gets plenty of young girls (and boys) who flit around, buying cups of tea more often than flowers, telling him this and that about their lives.

Seonghwa gets promoted too, and they spend a week off in France to celebrate. They drag their friends along with them, and Wooyoung proposes to San in a ludicrously fancy restaurant in Paris.

It’s a crazy week.

(Mingi, never one to be one-upped, proposes to Jongho at the Namsan Tower with a bouquet of Yeosang’s carefully arranged flowers. Jongho throws his own ring case at Mingi’s head, and Yeosang walks away without looking back. Even when Mingi begs Yeosang to help him. He’s never helping Mingi out again.)

And if Yeosang stays a little longer in the jewelry shop Yunho drags him to the next week, if he spend half of his savings on a pair of white gold rings with constellations carved along their sides, well, it’s his business.

After all, Mrs. Han did tell him to get his sweet boy a gift.

Yeosang’s very good at following advice.

Seonghwa looks at Yeosang like he’s the North Star. Yeosang thinks that he can stand smelling roses if it means Seonghwa will stay by his side.

“I love you.”

“I know.”

Yeosang and Seonghwa sing for Hongjoong, sometimes. The music producer is always short on vocalists for his tracks- not because there’s a lack of volunteers, but because Hongjoong has very specific criteria for them. So Yeosang’s voice is the one Hongjoong uses for his _Melodia_ project. When it blows up, suddenly people are asking for Yeosang to talk in radio shows, to come to all these parties and social events that Yeosang has no idea how to function at. He still goes of course, because this is Hongjoong’s song and Hongjoong’s baby. He wants to support his hyung where he can.

“What’s up with the roses tattooed on your neck, Yeosang-ssi,” one radio host, Hwanwoong, asks.

Yeosang blinks, surprised, and reaches up to touch his roses self-consciously. “Ah, well,” Yeosang says. “They aren’t really tattoos. I was born with them.”

The host looks confused, so Yeosang hurries to explain.

“I was born with the Angel’s Mark disorder,” he says. “The marks mean that I grow these flowers inside my throat as part of my magic’s manifestation.”

“Oh,” Hwanwoong says. His eyes are wide, and he looks very apologetic. “That must be a hassle when you sing.”

“It is,” Yeosang answers. “It’s why I could never go into professional singing.”

“But you like singing, huh? That’s tough.”

Yeosang thinks for a moment.

“Yes. Yes, I guess it is.”

When he returns home, Seonghwa’s waiting for him with a worried frown.

“It’s okay,” Yeosang tells him. “I’m okay.”

“You’re always okay,” Seonghwa answers with a broken laugh. He combs his hands through Yeosang’s hair and lets the younger melt into his chest. As a matter of fact, Yeosang should not always be okay, but he feels like it, so he thinks it’s enough. He prods Seonghwa into the bedroom, and flops onto the taller boy with a graceless grunt. Seonghwa laughs again. This time, it’s not so broken at all.

Seonghwa presses his lips onto the side of Yeosang’s forehead as they lie together that night, bare legs entangled in the shared sheets of Seonghwa’s larger bedroom.

“You know,” Yeosang mumbles, too well fucked out to have a filter, “I think we should remake the other bedroom into a studio already.”

Seonghwa snorts into his hair. “You asking to move in with me finally?” he teases.

Yeosang rolls his eyes and bumps his head into his boyfriend’s chin. “We’re already living together, dumbass. I’m just suggesting that we make things more efficient.”

“Sure,” Seonghwa tells him with a cheeky grin. “Whatever you want, Yeosangie.”

There’s a pair of ring boxes sitting under Yeosang’s new socks in his drawer. He’s got to think about them soon, but. Not yet.

He lets his eyes drift closed.

He thinks he’s happy.

At some point, Seonghwa stops telling Yeosang that he loves him after every date.

Yeosang doesn’t think about it.

###

They have their first big, serious fight four years into their relationship. One night, Seonghwa doesn’t pick up any of Yeosang’s calls. He’s not with any of the colleagues Yeosang can reach.

When he finally stumbles home at 4 AM, drunk and with the unfamiliar scent of cologne on his coat, Yeosang nearly yells at him.

He’s never yelled at anyone in his life. Right then and there he’s blinded by something he’s never felt before, and he thinks he might.

“Where were you,” he demands. Seonghwa doesn’t answer, his tall frame wavering as he avoids Yeosang’s eyes.

“Seonghwa,” Yeosang tries. “Hyung, why didn’t you pick up your phone? I was so worried-“

“As if you’d ever get worried,” Seonghwa snaps. He then flinches as if he’s the one that’s been hurt. His eyes are wide and startled. Yeosang has no idea what his face looks like just then, but judging by the way Seonghwa nearly falls over trying to stop Yeosang from pushing past him, it’s not a happy expression.

Yeosang pushes him away and storms out of the house. He stays over at Wooyoung and San’s that night, and refuses to tell them what happened. Maybe he should.

He’s forgotten to bring his meds with him, and when Seonghwa arrives two hours later with his medication and Seonghwa’s Galliflower spray, he lets the older man hold him tight and apologize over and over again as Yeosang scrubs the scent of roses from his teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Seonghwa cries. “I didn’t mean to say that I swear- Sangie, you’re the sweetest, kindest person I know, you know that right? I was just tired, didn’t mean it…”

He’s clearly still a little drunk. Yeosang hugs him back and thinks about the blue roses in his collection.

There’s a new one to add to it, if he can get rid of the blood.

Later on, Yeosang realizes that Seonghwa never said that he loves him, even while he was half-drunk and praising Yeosang’s eyes.

He doesn’t know how that makes him feel.

Yeosang starts singing at small events with Jongho, or some of his other friends. Seonghwa joins in from time to time, and Yeosang laughs himself high when Seonghwa gets into a rap battle with Jongho and San. Some people visit his shop not for his teas or flowers, but because of him, and Yeosang blushes every time they tell him that.

His parents call much less than they used to, and when they ask about his health Yeosang answers the same thing every time.

“I’m fine, mom,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, Seonghwa hyung’s taking care of me. Jesus, of course I always have emergency spray on me. We’ll go visit you on the holidays, don’t worry.”

From across the dinner table, Seonghwa chuckles at Yeosang’s exasperated face. At his warning glare and pout, Seonghwa tries to muffle them in his hands, but fails.

“See you mom. Yeah, love you too,” Yeosang says quickly, before he cuts off the call to lunge at his boyfriend.

One fierce pillowfight later, Yeosang and Seonghwa struggle into their matching suits.

“San is going to be so mad at us,” Seonghwa groans. “We’re going to be late to his wedding, and he’s going to lord it over us for _months_.”

“Are you kidding?” Yeosang laughs. “San’s probably going to get an expensive concert ticket out of us and then forget about it. Wooyoung’s the one that’s going to nag us for _years._ ”

Seonghwa laughs and kisses Yeosang playfully, causing the younger to swat at his side. “Stop,” Yeosang tries to say sternly. “You’re going to mess up my hair-“

They end up reaching the ceremony just in time for Yeosang to bound up the stairs as Wooyoung’s best man. Yeosang’s hair is too late to be saved, and when he breathlessly recites Wooyoung’s escapades from when they were teenagers, Jongho knowingly looks between him and Seonghwa and sighs. It passes in a bit of a blur.

The next thing Yeosang knows, he’s dancing with Wooyoung while San gets into a tickle fight with Mingi, essentially ruining the custom suit Hongjoong ordered for him. He hugs his best friend tight.

“I’m happy for you,” he whispers. San screams in the background. To the side, Jongho has grabbed a basket full of fruits from somewhere, and is showing off his fruit ninja skills to a crowd of awed wedding guests.

Wooyoung laughs. “Me too,” he snickers.

He pulls Yeosang into a crushing hug just as Yunho’s crazy fireworks go off in the background.

“I hope I can say the same to you soon,” he whispers into Yeosang’s ear. Before Yeosang can answer, he runs off into the crowd to save San from Mingi’s revenge.

Yeosang thinks of the boxes in his drawer.

Perhaps, he tells himself. Soon.

It’s not going to be soon.

Seonghwa keeps on coming home at late, late hours. The first time it happens again, Yeosang remembers the mess that happened weeks ago and stays silent. Seonghwa always apologizes, and explains that it’s his bosses.

“They won’t let me go,” Seonghwa complains one morning. He’s staring mournfully at the bowl of hang-over cure Yeosang’s whipped up. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

Yeosang eventually stops waiting up late for Seonghwa to return. Or, at least he tried to pretend to. He lies awake in bed every night Seonghwa stays out for hours, waiting anxiously to hear his boyfriend’s steps in the house. On those nights, Seonghwa stumbles home and heads straight for the bathroom. Yeosang falls asleep to the faint scent of alcohol on Seonghwa’s breath, and his mumbled apologies in his ear.

It doesn’t happen often, but it used to never happen before. Yeosang isn’t too worried- but he does get bothered by it. It feels more and more like Seonghwa’s hiding something from him.

One day, Seonghwa comes home at three AM in the morning. Yeosang thinks it’s like all the other times, and gets ready for Seonghwa to sneak into bed next to him.

But when Seonghwa finally does, Yeosang realizes something’s not quite the same.

There’s no alcohol on his clothes- only the faint scent of something foreign.

(Perfume. It’s not Seonghwa’s, though- Yeosang makes all of their shared colognes and perfumes as a hobby. He knows it’s not one of his.)

He doesn’t sleep that night.

And he doesn’t ask Seonghwa about it.

He can’t ask Seonghwa about it, if he’s being honest. The next morning, Seonghwa’s boss calls him in to replace a different employee on a business trip- the other guy broke his leg the night before.

Yeosang refuses to let Seonghwa go. Literally. He clings to Seonghwa’s soft pink sweater that he likes to steal, and wraps his legs around Seonghwa’s waist.

The older man laughs softly into Yeosang’s hair.

“Sang-ah, I have to go,” he murmurs. “Boss’s orders.”

Yeosang pouts but he lets Seonghwa shower him in warm kisses and pretty words before he hops off his back. Seonghwa’s hand lingers in his hair before he gets another call, and has to rush through the door.

Alone, Yeosang’s reminded about the smell on Seonghwa’s clothes.

It’s okay, he tells himself. There’s nothing to worry about.

He can’t have his heart broken, anyways. He doesn’t love Seonghwa.

He scientifically can’t.

(“How are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“But are you? Really?”

“I am. I always am.”)

Wooyoung notices. Yeosang’s only surprised that he noticed it when San’s there to distract him. The two are still in their honeymoon phase, after all.

They’re lounging on Hongjoong and Yunho’s couch, playing video games on Yunho’s absurdly luxurious gaming system. Hongjoong’s music production and fashion designing pays really-bloody-well. If Yunho doesn’t put the rings he bought months ago to good use, Yeosang might just propose to Hongjoong himself.

The ridiculous quality of Mario Kart doesn’t keep Wooyoung from seeing that something’s off with Yeosang, however, and he pauses the game in the middle of Rainbow Road.

“Wooyoung!” Yeosang yelps. He tries to unpause (is that a word?) the game, but Wooyoung grabs his wrist.

“Yeosang,” he says sternly. “There’s something on your mind, and you’re going to tell me about it.”

“It’s nothing,” Yeosang says quickly. Too quickly. Wooyoung’s eyes narrow in suspicion.

“It’s not nothing,” Wooyoung says. “I’ve never seen you choose a character other than Princess Peach in the ten years I’ve known you. What. Is. Wrong.”

Yeosang desperately wishes he could exercise his Miranda rights, but Wooyoung has always had a way of getting Yeosang to give up his deepest, darkest secrets. One tickle fight later, Yeosang finds himself staring dejectedly at the floor as he tells Wooyoung about Seonghwa’s nightly excursions.

“I don’t know why he won’t tell me the truth,” Yeosang mumbles into the throw pillow he’s cuddling with. “If he needs- if he wants to see somebody else it’s not like I’m going to stop him.”

Wooyoung frowns. “If hyung’s cheating on you, he better be ready to be thrown off an airplane soon,” he states.

Yeosang giggles. “I hope you don’t,” he says. “I’m rather fond of him.”

“Yeah, well,” Wooyoung grunts. “You won’t be fond after I’m done with him.”

He pauses, looks up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “But somehow, I don’t think you have much to worry about,” he says. “Just. Talk things out with him when he comes home, maybe?”

“I’ll do that,” Yeosang says.

He really does plan to. He would have.

...if Seonghwa had come home.

###

Yeosang bursts into the hospital lobby, dressed only in a lopsided sweater and frayed shorts. He knows he looks like a lunatic, wide eyed and flushed, but he can’t bring himself to care.

He slams sideways into the receptionist’s desk. The pain barely registers as he frantically grabs at the edge.

“Ma’am,” he tries very hard not to shout, “may I know where Park Seonghwa is?”

The receptionist doesn’t even look fazed. “What’s your name, sir?” she asks in return.

Yeosang babbles off his name, phone number, and the fact that the hospital had called him just fifteen minutes earlier because he was Seonghwa’s emergency contact.

“Your relationship with the patient?”

It takes Yeosang a moment to realize the receptionist is talking to him. He startles.

“I’m his boyfriend,” He says quickly. When the receptionist hesitates, he adds, “and his fiancé.”

She rings him through with a sympathetic smile. “He’s in room 208,” she says. “Doctor Lee’s in charge of him, so he’ll explain what you can do from here.”

Yeosang practically runs up the flight of stairs to reach the room. When knocks on the door, he feels like his chest is about to burst. He swallows. The scent of roses are heavy against his tongue; his teeth grit against the intrusive petals.

The doctor opens the door. Yeosang immediately hates the grim look on his face.

“Seonghwa,” he breathes. “Where is he?”

He tries to push past the doctor, but he grips Yeosang’s arm gently, but firmly.

“Please sit down, Mr. Kang,” the doctor urges. “Mr. Park is currently unconscious, and you may disturb him.”

Yeosang sucks in a breath and does as he is told. He catches sight of Seonghwa through the drapes around the hospital bed.

He’s. He’s so still.

“He’s not in critical danger,” the doctor says. Only then does Yeosang realize that he’s just spoken aloud.

“What happened?” he asks. His voice trembles a little, and Yeosang’s hand flied to his throat. He can’t tell if the tightness is from anxiousness, or from the flowers.

Doctor Lee rubs the bridge of his nose, and beckons to the nurse standing at his side. She clicks something that makes a screen pop up against the bland wall of the room.

It’s a scan. A Thaumate-Sensitive scan. Yeosang’s seen plenty TS-scans taken of his own chest and throat, but this is the first time he’s seen one of someone else’s chest.

“If you see here,” the doctor continues, “Mr. Park’s heart core is quite shrunken compared to his physical heart.”

He taps the region where Seonghwa’s heart should be. Yeosang has only ever seen magical anatomy maps in highschool, but he still remembers that all magical cores- the ones centered around your heart, brain, and other important points- are supposed to be roughly the size of the actual correlating organs. The heart core, in particular, is always described as something beating. Moving. Fluctuating, because it needs to push your natural thaumate flow throughout your body, just like how your physical heart pushes your blood through your veins.

Yeosang stares at where the doctor is pointing. Seonghwa’s heart core doesn’t look like it’s moving at all.

“It’s also pulsating at a significantly slower rate than is healthy. We need to run a few more tests before we can be certain, but it looks like Mr. Park has a case of core petrification. It’s not incurable, but the treatment that he requires is only available during the new moon, and it takes at least six months for us to tell if it’s successful or not. I’m afraid that the patient doesn’t have that much time.”

Inside his chest, Yeosang’s heart stutters. He hears his voice waver as he asks, “what’s going to happen to him?”

Doctor Lee grimaces. “It could take anywhere from three to nine weeks. His heart core will slowly become completely petrified, though we can try to slow it down with activated thaumate shots. It can’t be stopped without the full treatment, though, and Mr. Park’s condition has progressed too much for us to hope that he’ll make it long enough for the cure to do its work.”

“And when the heart core becomes… petrified?”

“Most likely, his physical heart will stop as well,” the doctor answers. “Or, if he’s very, very, lucky- the brain’s core will resume the heart core’s functions, but that would mean that Mr. Park’s brain will remain dormant for the rest of his life.”

Yeosang releases a shuddering breath. He feels panic building up somewhere inside of him. Dully, he registers the pain of his bruised side.

“Can I see him?”

The request comes out much more calmer than Yeosang expects. The doctor assures him that of course he can, and helps Yeosang move his chair to Seonghwa’s bedside. The nurse pins back the curtains so that he can reach out to him.

It’s only when Yeosang actually sees Seonghwa’s face frightfully slack and devoid of any laughter that he breaks down.

A strangled scream makes its way out of Yeosang’s throat and he stumbles, clutching onto Seonghwa’s hand so hard that his knuckles turn white. For the first time in his life Yeosang doesn’t know what to do, what to say. He shudders as he draws in a breath and chokes on it. The nurse behind him makes a concerned noise, but he can’t focus on anything other than the tubes snaking under Seonghwa’s arms, the scans hanging next to the hospital bed. The god-awful hospital clothes that look eerily similar to the couple pajamas they had bought when they first started living together. The paleness of Seonghwa’s cheeks, how much more sharp his cheekbones are than usual.

When he speaks up again, Yeosang almost doesn’t recognize his voice. It’s sharp, and it’s desperate. It almost sounds like his mother’s used to when he was a kid lying in a hospital bed.

“How long has this been going on?” he asks.

“He must have been feeling the symptoms for a few months at the very least. It’s a very gradual process, and most people come to get it checked earlier. We don’t know exactly what causes the petrification, because it differs for each core, but it starts in the heart under extreme emotional stress or repression. Was there anything that happened in your lives around a year ago, perhaps?”

Yeosang shakes his head. He doesn’t remember anything that would have pushed Seonghwa’s magic out of rhythm. They’d had that fight, but it wasn’t _that_ bad. Yeosang can’t understand why Seonghwa’s in this situation. He can’t think of anything.

(Maybe, a voice whispers in the corner of his head. Maybe it’s not something to do with you.)

“No,” Yeosang says aloud, a bit louder than he intended to. “No,” he repeats. “I don’t recall anything that would cause this.”

“It does happen spontaneously, in rare cases,” the doctor assures him. “What’s important now is how we deal with this.”

“Is there something that we can do…?”

“Certainly yes. Many of our previous patients in the late stages of petrification were able to Heart-Share with someone close to them- ideally a lover, or a parent, or sometimes a sibling- by a Heart-Soul bond.”

“A what?”

“You probably have never heard of it,” Dr. Lee says. “It used to be an archaic way of marrying two people, but modern doctors have turned it into a procedure that allows a patient to share the heart core of another’s. In cases where someone’s own heart core is malfunctioning, or needs prolonged treatment like Mr. Park’s, this usually gives the doctors time to work on operations and medication for the patient. Some people actually choose to keep Heart-Sharing instead of taking the medical treatment, but we don’t really recommend that. After all, the bond is a fragile thing and relationships don’t always last forever.”

Yeosang’s death grip loosens in relief. Then he remembers the vines that wrap around his neck, the roses that are always, always there.

“Doctor,” he breathes, feeling ice-cold dread creeping up his spine. “Is the bond still possible if the owner of the heart doesn’t love the recipient?”

The doctor looks from Yeosang’s shaking hands, back to his face. “It doesn’t work if either party doesn’t love the other,” he says slowly, “but I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

But he does. He does have to worry about it, because-

“I was born with an Angel’s Mark,” Yeosang hisses through his teeth. “I- it manifests in my throat, in my vocal chords- I have to take medication that blocks my emotional flow. Medically- magically, there’s no way there’s enough reciprocal attachment in my thaumate circuit to make a Heart-Soul bond work.”

The room falls into deathly silence. Yeosang can only hear his own ragged breaths. Why is his vision so splotchy? Why does his throat hurt so badly? Why can’t he _feel?_

Suddenly, Yeosang realizes how tight his hands are around Seonghwa’s. He forces himself to take a breath and relax his grip. He can’t understand why he’s like this, but he blinks the blurriness away from his eyes.

“Is there any way I could still share my heart core with him?”

“It doesn’t work like that. You can’t share your heart with somebody you don’t love, that’s not something you can do. For the Heart-Soul bond to hold, both sides need to truly love each other. Otherwise, it just fails and the bond ends up snapping.”

“What happens if it snaps?”

“Oh, not much to the original owner of the heart. To the one sharing it? They just revert back to the state they were in before the procedure.”

The doctor pauses, before giving Yeosang a sympathetic look.

“For Mr. Park, that would mean the state he’s in right now.”

Yeosang stares at Seonghwa, lying still (too still) on the bed. His hand’s warm, but Yeosang fears that it’s not as warm as it used to be.

“But- the Angel’s Mark- I’m medically unable to love. I’d need… I’d need to stop taking the medicine I use to keep my throat clear of the roses.”

“That, or you’d have to go through the removal procedure,” Doctor Lee tells him. “It might take a couple weeks for you to get adjusted, but you won’t be pruning your emotions anymore, so you might be able to undergo the Heart-Soul bond soon enough.”

“How long did you say he had?”

“Three weeks. Two months, at most.”

Yeosang knows. He knows what the doctor had said the first time, and it doesn’t change just because Yeosang wishes it too.

He doesn’t have a lot of time.

Yeosang’s hand tightens around Seonghwa’s. He wishes the older boy will wake up, scare him with a jump and a boo that never startles Yeosang- he’ll still pretend to be surprised. He doesn’t want to look at the scans of Seonghwa’s heart, of the blatant petrification his magical core is undergoing.

But he has to, eventually. Seonghwa has no parents, no siblings, no cousins. Yeosang’s the first name listed in his emergency contact list, and that means the doctor hands him the few options Seonghwa has.

  1. Exchange his heart core with someone else’s. (Impossible. No blood relatives mean that there’s nearly nobody with the same magical frequency as Seonghwa’s- a simple transplant can’t work if it’s your magical core that’s shutting down.)
  2. Try to preemptively remove Seonghwa’s core and pray that Seonghwa can survive without his magic. (Not impossible, but Seonghwa would need to receive thaumate shots and medicine for the rest of his life. And there isn’t a good chance he’ll survive the procedure in the first place.)
  3. Conduct the Heart-Soul bonding procedure, and keep the bond until the doctors procure complete the reverse petrification process.
  4. Wait and hope it recovers on its own.



He stares down at the tiny, neat print.

It’s his choice, in the end.

(In the end, there is no choice.)

He calls Wooyoung, because no matter how much he loves all his friends, it’s Wooyoung who has always known him the best. It was Wooyoung who held him during those highschool days when Yeosang felt so empty he wanted to just sleep forever, and it was Wooyoung who held back his hair as Yeosang vomited flowers and petals and leaves after flushing his medicine down the toilet.

When he’s finished telling Wooyoung everything, the other man is silent for a moment. Then-

“Are you sure that’s the only option?”

Yeosang takes a deep breath. “It’s either that, or we find a necromancer to reanimate Seonghwa hyung’s dead parents for a heart transplant,” he tries to joke. His voice doesn’t shake anymore, and he’s proud.

Wooyoung snorts, but it’s without much humor.

“Yeosang-ah… do you think you’ll love him after the surgery?”

The man in question doesn’t answer. He clears his throat, spits out a blue petal from where it’s stuck behind his teeth.

“The doctors say that I’d have to get a cordectomy,” he says instead. “They’ll have to cut out the part that houses the manifestation point, for me to get rid of the roses for good. Unless I manifest them in some other place again- quite rare, they assure me- I should be back to normal in around a couple weeks at most. Might be a bit numb before that, though. It differs from person to person, some people regain their full range of emotion within hours.”

Wooyoung hums pointedly. “What about your voice?” he asks.

Yeosang hesitates. “I probably won’t lose it completely.”

“Probably?”

He doesn’t answer that, either.

A sigh comes over the line. “Yeosang, whatever you choose- you know that we all still love you, right? Seonghwa-hyung wouldn’t want you to sacrifice anything for him, if you’re scared to do it. He loves you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Yeosang says.

He doesn’t know why it feels like he’s lying. He’s not. He knows all his friends would love him, no matter what.

He just doesn’t know if…

Well.

(I’m not worried that I won’t love Seonghwa, he thinks. I’m worried that he doesn’t love me anymore.)

The house is unbearably quiet. Yeosang’s run through all of Hongjoong’s playlists much too soon, and he has on that one song he remembers from college on repeat. It isn’t the same as having Seonghwa next to him, arms wrapped tightly around Yeosang’s middle as they watch Star Wars or Harry Potter for the nth time.

He eyes the bottle of pills on his bedside table. Ignores it. Collapses onto the couch. TV does little to distract him, but alcohol does, and soon enough Yeosang passes out to the low buzz on talking on screen.

Suffocation wakes him. His throat aches terribly, and petals have fallen into piles off the side of the couch. His fingers, when he reaches into his mouth, entangle with entire vines and blossoms in full bloom.

He tears them from his throat until tears run from his eyes. It feels like they’re never going to end. Blue after green after blue after red. Thorns scratch the inside of his mouth, his tongue. They scrape over his teeth as he spits them out. Slowly, the last of the horrible flowers fall to the ground in a messy, messy death.

Panting for a moment, Yeosang grasps for his spray. Coats his entire mouth in it until he feels like he’s going to hurl his stomach, not flowers.

The perfectly formed roses go into the trash bin.

His collection remains unchanged.

It’s surprisingly easy to make a decision. When he’s finished signing the twenty-something required papers, it’s nearing the end of Seonghwa’s visiting time. He enters the room with Seonghwa’s name on his lips. It dies when he remembers that there’s nobody to hear it.

He sits down in the visitor’s chair next to Seonghwa. There’s a heavy box in his pocket and an even heavier envelope in his numb hands.

“You better wake up soon,” Yeosang tells Seonghwa’s slack, unmoving face. “I’m not going to propose to a vegetable.”

There’s no response.

That’s okay. Yeosang didn’t expect one, not yet.

(There was never a choice.)

Yeosang sits in the hospital waiting room and wonders if he’ll love Seonghwa soon enough. He thumbs over his mom’s phone number and hesitates before he tucks the phone away. No need to make her upset already, he thinks.

Yeosang remembers when he was seven, and the kindly old doctor explained to him how his roses were literally the physical manifestation of his emotions. Why he couldn’t laugh for weeks after he had to cut new buds from his throat. Why, if, the wreath of vibrant rose vines around his throat ever bloomed in full, he had to immediately tell his parents.

He remembers how he took the lollipop from her hands and wondered why he didn’t like the taste of grapes anymore.

The last thought he has before the doctor slides the needle into his arm is if he’ll like grape-flavored sweets again.

He hopes he does.

(He would always make the same choice.)

“Mr. Kang?” someone says. Yeosang doesn’t recognize the voice, but it’s nice. Soothing.

“Mr. Kang, you did very well,” it says. “We’ll have to put you under again, but when you wake up you should be back on your feet in no time, alright?”

A shadowed hand passes in front of Yeosang’s face. He glimpses the sight of twisted vines, leafy, topped with dark and bright blobs of blue. They look familiar.

“Come on now, you need to rest,” the voice says gently.

“You’ll be okay.”

Yeosang wakes with a shudder and a gasp, like a man taking his first breath of air. His eyes blink rapidly against the harsh light of the hospital room.

“You’re awake!” says a bright voice. Yeosang turns his head, stiffly to see Hongjoong, sitting at the head of his bed with a wide but frightening grin.

“Do you know how close I came to having a heart attack because of you?” Hongjoong grits between his teeth. “You and Seonghwa both- I can’t believe you pulled this shit on me.”

Yeosang yelps at Hongjoong flicks at his arm. “Ah! Hyung!” he tries to say, but nothing comes out of his mouth.

He bolts upright in bed. Works his jaw twice. Blinks again.

When he looks back at Hongjoong, the older man is looking at him with a sad light in his eyes.

“Your vocal chords aren’t completely healed yet,” Hongjoong says. “Thankfully they only had to remove a part of them, so you should be able to speak. To some extent.”

He grabs Yeosang’s phone from one of his oversized pockets and presses it into Yeosang’s hand.

“I know you have a lot to ask, so- here, use that to talk to me.”

Hongjoong’s right. Yeosang’s head grows light at the churning feeling in his stomach. Seonghwa. His heart core. Yeosang’s surgery.

His hands start shaking as he types out his question.

‘Did they do it?’

It’s short, and it leaves out everything, but Hongjoong understands.

“Yes,” the red-head breathes. “Yes, they did. Seonghwa just went into treatment two hours ago. The nurses tell me that he’s doing good, real good. The bond’s steady, very strong. They were surprised when I told them you two weren’t married yet.”

Reality comes crashing down on Yeosang. The phone drops from his fingers as he curls inwards, hair falling into his face. He’s trembling so bad that Yeosang’s afraid he’ll shatter into pieces. Distantly he feels Hongjoong’s hands curl around his shoulders, arm reaching around to steady him. He bows his head and buries his face into his hands.

For the first time since he was seven, Yeosang cries.

He isn’t a loud crier. He has never learned how to cry like that, how to sob and wail like his world’s breaking apart. He’s silent even as his tears flood his lap, even as Hongjoong strokes his hair and rubs his back.

Yeosang cries not because he’s sad, but because the first emotion he feels properly is love. It’s relief that courses his veins, and if he stretches his quiet thrum of magic, Yeosang can feel Seonghwa’s presence, brighter and more brilliant than ever. So he cries, cries because he can, and because he doesn’t quite feel like he’s suffocating anymore.

“You did so well,” Hongjoong tells him, and it’s eerily like déjà vu. Yeosang rubs at his eyes as the older man pulls him into a tight hug. “You’re so brave, kid,” he adds. “Wait till Seonghwa wakes up and sees you. The idiot’s probably going to cry in front of everyone.

Yeosang sniffles out a giggle and presses his face into Hongjoong’s shoulder. Everything’s going to be okay, he thinks.

And he believes it.

###

The doctors finally let Yeosang in Seonghwa’s room six hours after they proclaim him stable. Yeosang uses Hongjoong as a crutch to get to the room, and then cling to Doctor Lee’s coattails for another thirty minutes to convince him to let Yeosang in.

Yeosang nearly runs to the chair placed by Seonghwa’s side when the door opens. The only thing stopping him is the IV stand he’s connected to, and the nurse’s glare when he takes one hasty step.

He takes Seonghwa’s hand gently. He’s still a little afraid that this is all a dream- that he’ll wake up to the doctor telling him that they’re sorry, but the bond wouldn’t take place. If that happens Yeosang doesn’t think he’ll be able to ever sleep again, so he fervently hopes it won’t.

“Seonghwa hyung?” he tries to whisper. His throat barely lets out a hoarse whimper, but Yeosang will take what he gets. He lifts Seonghwa’s hand, presses it against his cheek. He wishes his lover would wake up already. Yeosang doesn’t think he’s going to be able to wait much longer. He might just spontaneously combust.

Maybe things didn’t go as smoothly as the doctors said. Maybe the bond’s unstable- is what Yeosang feeling not love? Thinking about it, he’s not sure if what he’s feeling is that different from what he used to feel. Things are a lot more… intense, and vibrant, but is that all Yeosang needed? Did he make some kind of mistake?

“Sang-ah?”

Yeosang’s eyes fly open at the familiar sound of Seonghwa’s voice. His eyes immediately meet Seonghwa’s dazed, but definitely awake ones.

A buzz fills his head. He feels unbearably light- so he grips Seonghwa’s hand tight, to keep himself from flying away.

“Yeosang?” this time Seonghwa sounds a lot more awake. Worry is creeping into his voice, and Yeosang opens his mouth to assure him, but nothing comes out.

“Yeosang, are you okay? God, what- what happened to you? Why are we in the hospital? Are- are you _crying?_ ”

A hand fits underneath Yeosang’s chin and tilts his face. Yeosang can’t see Seonghwa’s face properly because of the stupid tears. Seonghwa’s warm hands wipe at the corners of his eyes and Yeosang tries to pull away, a flush spreading across his face from embarrassment. Seonghwa refuses to let go.

“What’s wrong?” Seonghwa asks.

Yeosang wants to tell him that nothing is wrong. That he now knows what love feels like. He wants to tell Seonghwa that he thinks he’s always known what it felt like, even if it was much duller. That he thinks he was just afraid, for so long. That he’s sorry for letting Seonghwa hurt on his own.

But he cannot say those things, at least not yet.

Instead, Yeosang pulls out the box he asked Hongjoong to fetch for him from the locker downstairs. They’re not in the fanciest restaurant in the world, and Yeosang doesn’t have any luxurious bouquets prepared. He doesn’t even have a voice to speak with, right now.

He opens the box.

Seonghwa stares at it in silence, mouth ajar.

Yeosang squeezes his hand until Seonghwa slowly looks back at him. He takes a deep, unsteady breath, and tries to work around his raw throat.

‘I love you,’ he tries to say. ‘Stay with me?’

It’s like time freezes for an instant. Seonghwa, still gaping at Yeosang, and Yeosang with a surprisingly firm grip on the box. The silence stretches and stretches until Yeosang wants to rip out his hair in frustration. Maybe- maybe Seonghwa didn’t get it the first time. He wants to do this now, with or without his damn voice. Somehow it feels as though he’ll never get the chance again.

Then Seonghwa’s yanking him forward, startling him. Yeosang’s afraid that he’s dropped the ring box, but when his eyes focus again, Seonghwa’s holding the ring tight in his hand, the box dropped somewhere behind him on the bed. Yeosang’s heart stammers as Seonghwa slides the ring on, and pulls him into a tight hug.

“I love you,” Seonghwa rasps. “I love you too.”

The anxiousness drains out of Yeosang’s body, evaporates into sheer ecstatic nothingness. A soundless laugh wracks its way out of his throat, and he throws his arms around Seonghwa’s neck. He’s alive, and so is his boyfriend- fiancé, now- and his friends are right outside the doors, waiting for them to return to them. He’s truly okay.

Even better, he’s happy.

And that’s something Yeosang swears to remember for the rest of his life.

(Yeosang is born with dark blue roses blooming across his skin. Once, he would have clipped them, covered them up. Now they’re always in full bloom- it’s safe, now, for Yeosang to let them free.

He never regrets it.)

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: this story may contain some depressive themes related to chronic illness and sickness in general, so please be careful if you dislike such things!  
> ***
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
